Goodbye HTC Desire, and good riddance!

Ok, before I start my little rant, I am aware that most people have had good experiences with this phone and that I may just be the most unlucky person in the world. However, I think it is important I share my issues with this phone. This is not a bash of the Desire which, aside from my issues, I think is the best phone on the market - provided you can get your hands on one that works.

I got my first Desire about a month ago. It had 3 dead pixels and a ton of dust under the screen. I returned it the next day and Carphone Warehouse swapped it over. The next one was fine for a while, but I quickly noticed dust under the screen. Then it started rebooting itself constantly, often requiring a battery removal to stop it. Again, a return.

The next phone had, you guessed it, dust under the screen, but I could live with it. What I couldn't live with was the fact that it turned off randomly and the vibrating mechanism was clearly broken, resulting in my phone clicking rather than vibrating.

My forth phone (yes, forth) had, yes, DUST under the screen. It also regularly would refuse to vibrate at all (for calls / texts / haptic feedback), even though settings were correct.

Being on my forth phone I was too embarrassed to go back to Carphone Warehouse, despite the fact staff had always been very helpful, so i contacted head office and told them the issues. They agreed that 4 faulty phones was ridiculous and agreed to give me a refund. I have just done this and I am so glad I am free from this amazing but flawed handset.

I know what you are thinking, you probably just got a bad batch, and perhaps you are right... but there are 3 Carphone Warehouses in my area, and I tried all of them when returning phones - partly to avoid looking really dumb and secondly because I wanted to try and make sure I wasn't getting another from the same batch. My first phone with the dead pixels was actually bought in another town 80 miles away.

So, to clarify, ALL my phones had dust under the screen from unboxing. 2 of them had vibrating issues and 1 constantly rebooted. I loved Android, but I am now VERY wary of HTC. I think they have potential, but in my experience are cutting corners in terms of build quality.

I will buy another phone soon, what I do not know, but hopefully it will be Android based.

Potential buyers - perhaps I am the most unlucky person when it comes to phones, but I would recommend you check your phone very thoroughly before you leave the store.

What I would say however is that Carphone Warehouse were amazing throughout this whole little saga... staff were friendly, understanding and always took my issue seriously. So a bit shout out to them and I will def be buying my next phone from them.

I would like to make one point and that is that CW would buy in bulk and distribute to their stores and so all stores in your area are likely to have phones from the same batch. Therefore going to different stores would achieve very little indeed.

All I can say is that both my partner and I have HTC Desires, I also had a HTC Touch HD beforehand and not one of them has had any issues at all. No dead pixels, no "mechanical" issues, no technical issues etc. All 3 phones have worked as well as expected.

Does seem like you were unfortunate and so I can see why you feel the way you do but I am sure if you add up all the Desire sales and then look at how many actually have the faults you had it would be an incredibly small percentage.

I would like to make one point and that is that CW would buy in bulk and distribute to their stores and so all stores in your area are likely to have phones from the same batch. Therefore going to different stores would achieve very little indeed.

All I can say is that both my partner and I have HTC Desires, I also had a HTC Touch HD beforehand and not one of them has had any issues at all. No dead pixels, no "mechanical" issues, no technical issues etc. All 3 phones have worked as well as expected.

Does seem like you were unfortunate and so I can see why you feel the way you do but I am sure if you add up all the Desire sales and then look at how many actually have the faults you had it would be an incredibly small percentage.

Good luck with whatever phone you get next.

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Agreed, reading around this forum it is clear I am in the minority, but I am still shocked by what I experienced.

If you can spot 3 dead pixels in 384000 I very much doubt you will be pleased with anything.

I refuse to believe you could see 3 dead pixels.

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3 dead pixels in roughly the same area on a white background stick out like a sore thumb... and given that many applications (e-mail/messages) use white backgrounds, it was very clear. The worst bit was was that the pixels were in the area where the HTC Clock goes, on the white part, so you could always see them. Believe me, 3 dead pixels on a small screen are noticeable. If they had been in the status bar, perhaps you are right that I wouldn't notice them, but these were not.

I am not in the minority here, search google and you will find loads of people taking entire televisions / phones etc back due to one dead pixel... My TV actually has a dead pixel in the top right hand corner... and it doesn't bother me - in fact I have never noticed it since I originally found it when I first got the set, but for a phone that tends to display fairly static images, dead pixels are awful.

I can't be bothered to work out pixels/inch2 for the Desire but let's just say it is impossible.

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Dude, I understand where you are coming from, but it is not impossible, because I could see 3 dead pixels. So unless I have super awesome eyes, dead pixels are visible on the HTC Desire. They are small, granted, but you can see them.

Doing a very quick and rough calculation, I would estimate that each pixel is approximately 0.1mm in size. I have to say I can see a dot of 0.1mm as can anyone who has done tech drawing(as an example) given the pens used can go down to a tenth of a mm.

Therefore claiming that dead pixels CANNOT be seen is total crap! Dead pixels can be seen esp in white areas.

As for TVs, companies will not usually replace them unless they have more than 3 dead pixels. Not sure what HTC's position is with this.